


John is Not Fine

by Lestradesexwife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Reichenbach Falls, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 11:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/925598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lestradesexwife/pseuds/Lestradesexwife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Fall was cruel, there are things that John might have said. Might have done and Should have been can't change what is and will be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Aria and Otter are two of the best things to happen to me ever... They should be given awards for patience and excellence.

_If you ask me how I'm doin I would say I'm doin just fine_

_I would lie and say that you're not on my mind_

_But I go out and I sit down at a table set for two_

_and finally I'm forced to face the truth_

_No matter what I say, I'm not over you_

_Gavin Degraw - Not Over You_

 

John expects to go to jail. At least for a little while; chinning a member of Scotland Yard’s upper echelons seems like something that would land a person in... well prison. Everything that had followed from that moment seemed to be further proof that he would be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure for... well possibly the rest of his life, if they decided that he had taken part in Sherlock’s elaborate crimes. 

 

He’s even sort of been looking forward to it. He doesn’t think prison would, help was too strong a word, fix anything. He doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong, well except for assaulting the Chief Inspector. The bit with the gun had, honestly, been Sherlock’s idea... John’s brain shied away from thoughts of Sherlock because he’s stuck in a loop trying and failing to talk Sherlock down... Grasping at anything different to have said, anything that would have...

 

_I love you, please don’t... please don’t make me watch... let me come up and we can go together...please wait for me...don’t go without me._

 

He hadn’t said that, and he is sure that it wouldn’t have made a difference if he had... and if he had made it to the roof he is sure he wouldn’t have been able to say anything to bring Sherlock away from the edge. Maybe going with him would have been enough. People would have talked, but they did little else.

 

_Talk and die, that is what people do._

 

He has no idea what to do now; he isn’t afraid to die. He’s been so close to the edge so often it is nothing to tip over, to just give in to it. John just can’t find his way; all the danger has fled the world. He can’t go back to the army, Moriarty has vanished, he’s tried walking alone at night... he can’t even get mugged. Maybe in prison there will be an enemy of Sherlock’s, someone with a score to settle. 

 

But he hasn’t gone to jail, and that frankly stinks of Mycroft. John just has no idea why... misplaced guilt (it had been John’s failing in the end, not Mycroft’s.) John knows that Sherlock was real; maybe Mycroft thinks he is doing Sherlock’s memory some sort of service by keeping John out of the backlash. John doesn’t bother to entertain the notion that Mycroft had done anything at all for John’s sake. Mycroft hasn’t shown his face at Baker Street, John hadn’t shown his at the funeral. John isn’t hopeful that this means Mycroft has forgotten him, or that he will be left in peace.

 

It has taken a painfully short time for the press to move on to other things. Sex scandals in parliament, the war, sex scandals in the war... Nothing holds their interest for long, and it makes John more aware of his own attention span. If this had happened to someone else John would have forgotten it by now. Dragged along in the current of popular culture and the never ending drama of human life. It didn’t happen to someone else, it happened to him... at him... without his permission or cooperation. He doesn’t want to stay in this moment, he wants to break free of it... because it should not be this heavy. He is empty, and it is horrible, that he could be empty and have so much inside himself at the same time. 

 

He moves out of Baker Street, and that lasts about seven days. The black car actually contains Anthea this time, and it drops him at the door to 221B without her speaking a word. John wonders, as he lets himself into the flat, if Mycroft knows something John doesn’t. Sherlock’s room is empty: furniture, clothing and the violin all gone. All the things, everything that makes Baker Street John’s home, are still there... even though none of it belongs to John. 

 

He doesn’t work; he eats, sleeps and sits in the chair. Facing off against an empty space, wondering if Mycroft would come to scold him for... John couldn’t think of anything that Mycroft could scold John over... If Sherlock had told the truth about being a fake, then he had faked all of their friendship and nothing John did now would matter to Sherlock at all. If Sherlock lied and he was the genius John knew him to be, there still wasn’t anything for John to do.  

 

Which is not a hundred percent true either... The more John thinks on it the more he knows he has a choice. He can ignore everything he knows, focus on rebuilding his own life. Or he can choose to be the nutter the papers made him out to be in the beginning, the man who believed. Believes. John can be the man who believes. 

 

He shakes himself; he is the man who believes, there never was any question of that. The only question left is what to do now. John doesn’t think, in the end, that Sherlock would care about what other people thought of him. Nearly everyone is an idiot. It only mattered what John thinks, maybe Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson too.

 

Mrs. Hudson seems constitutionally unable to understand him. She believes too, of course, but there is a fundamental misunderstanding between them. He can’t articulate where they diverge. Lestrade is avoiding him, and that is sensible; it doesn’t feel like a betrayal. John knows that he has been under Mycroft’s protection... It feels like John has abandoned Greg, that he should call Mycroft and have him sort out the whole thing for Greg, make it all go away. John thinks Mycroft might even do it if John could bear to make the call, invoke Sherlock’s memory to guilt Mycroft into doing the right thing. John bears the guilt of not being able to speak Sherlock’s name to his brother, even to save one of Sherlock’s true friends from the slings and arrows of public and professional scorn.

 

Which leaves only Molly; if anyone is able to share his belief it will be her. John sends her an email, inviting her over for tea. Long moments staring at the blinking cursor, inventing reasons for her to say yes. Imagining all the reasons she has to refuse him.

 

She’s nervous when she arrives at Baker Street, fidgets while John offers her tea. John can tell that she is holding something back. He waits, sipping tea, unsure if she will break and tell him or if he will have to work it out on his own. She’s running her fingers over the lip of the mug, avoiding meeting his eyes. The nausea rising in John’s gut begins to take form, truth and lies. Sherlock never lies, Sherlock never tells the truth; he’d pulled John from him, torn open John’s allegiances and forced him away. There was a space, room for a miracle, or a magic trick. The bastard would leave him out, after everything, would keep John in the dark... make him watch and then leave him to fall apart on his own.

 

“Is he coming back?”

 

Molly’s shoulders collapse, her hands falling around the cup as though she is protecting it. “I don’t know.”

 

She sits and stares at the mug for several minutes, and John can’t stand to ask her how, doesn’t _want_ to know how Sherlock did it. It doesn’t matter. He’s done it. He’s alive, or was after he fell off a building. John’s heart pounds: anger, fear and something sharp that almost feels like an ending. Molly doesn’t try to speak, she doesn’t drink her tea. She waits until it becomes obvious that John is not going to speak to her again. Then she carries her mug into the kitchen and dumps it out in the sink. She leaves through the kitchen door and John stares at nothing in particular until the room darkens and then fills with the artificial glow of the streetlamps.

 

In the morning he makes himself tea, the kettle boils and he stares at the mug Molly used the night before. It is Sherlock’s; it belongs to him and he will drink tea out of it again. John should smash it, should pile every stinking thing of Sherlock’s in the park and set it on fire. Should throw himself on the pyre and let it be done with. 

 

He’s not fine, and he’s not over Sherlock. If it was over John could leave, walk away or in front of a bus, and John can’t do that, so it mustn’t actually be over.

 

He rinses the mug, puts it back in the cupboard. Rings up Mike and some of the rugby lads to help move his furniture downstairs, takes over the empty room and puts a sign in the window to let the attic.

 

He’s not fine, but he hasn’t ever needed to be fine. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is entirely un-beta'd. Please feel free to beat me about the head and shoulders with any spag corrections

The edges of the card cut into his hand, he’s folded it, creased it so hard it nearly tore until it is just a collection of sharp edges and corners. Designed to make him tear his skin and bleed. Before Afghanistan, he’d always thought it was the tiniest wounds that hurt the most. The brain protects itself from trauma, balances danger with the drive and power to overcome. Small wounds are to be borne. Now he knows that major damage can linger, far beyond the ability of the mind to compensate. 

His fingers convulse around the card at the sound of the bell, two quick bursts. Not a client or a friend -not that there are many of those darkening his door lately. He’s tempted to lean out the window, shout at the intruder to go away. He’d meant to bin the sign anyway, he can kill two metaphorical birds.

Putting up a sign offering a room to let had been a mistake. The first several applicants had proven that much. John rolled his eyes as he made his way down to the landing... “Applicants.” Women, certainly old enough to be called that - not girls - who became teary-eyed. Either immediately on the sight of him, one of them even ran away when he opened the door, or within moments of entering the flat. One man - he’d stood at parade rest and informed John that he didn’t need a lodger and if he felt the need for companionship Mr. Holmes would arrange for someone suitable, professional, and discrete. John had closed his eyes against that, stood perfectly still until the sound of the downstairs door freed him. 

The bell rings again before he gains the first landing. “Yes! Hold on!” Loud enough to be heard through the space and the thick door. “Bloody impatient, if you cry at me I will shoot you.” Closer, under his breath. He’d checked the forums after the first couple weepers, someone had helpfully posted a picture of his sign, accompanied by some incoherent, improperly punctuated and misspelled... what did they call it? Squeeing. He is almost grateful that the majority of the comments are admonishments to “leave the poor man alone, he’s mourning.” Almost.

He pulls the door, sharp and irritated. “The room’s been let.” The lie is easier than the truth, he can’t bear the idea of letting one more person over the threshold. One more person who thinks that they understand him... that they understood Sherlock, from what they had read in his blog. 

She jumps, for all her impatient bell ringing she’s turned out to look at the street, spins back towards him. A swirl of colour: blond hair, bright orange coat and long green scarf, bright patterned skirt and striped stockings. “Bugger... Oh sorry! I’ve been looking for ages. It is impossible to find a decent flat share in this city.”

The tickle in the back of John’s mind forms into recognition. “Mary? Mary Morstan?” She hasn’t changed, from the mischievous spark in her eyes to her “style.” He’d loved her completely from fourth through sixth forms. 

“James?”

And she’d had no idea who he was then... some things never change.

“John, John Watson.”

“Oh! Oh god! John! I’m sorry... I’ve always been daft at names.” She blushes as she says it, ducks her head and tucks her hair behind her ear. “And behind times... I meant to stop off yesterday when I saw the sign. I had the kids with me and... well never mind... It was nice to see you again John. I should... there was a listing over the other side of the park.”

“It’s just the attic room anyway... not really room for kids.” He hadn’t seen her in decades, never really thought her the type to want kids. But then again he wasn’t the type to run off to the army either, not then.

“Oh... No... I’m a nanny. Well I was a nanny. The kids are... god... not mine. But the father been transferred to... well he’s transferred and there’s no reason to bring me along. There wasn’t time to... they left last night... and I’ve a bedsit.” Her nose wrinkled, in the exact way John remembers it wrinkling when one of his rugby mates had made a lewd comment about her friend, and he’d seen the moment he went from ‘vaguely interesting soon to be med-student’ to ‘testosterone addled neanderthal-by-proxy’ in her eyes.

“Listen, Mary. I wasn’t entirely truthful before. I haven’t let the room yet... There’ve been, well... I just thought I would try going through an agent instead. You can come have a look if you like. It’s... the bloke before... well it was just us... so it’s not exactly... normal. Better than a bedsit I’d say though.” He’s blushing and stammering by the time he stops speaking, reverting to a nervous 16 year old under her gaze. Feeling the need to justify the way he lives, simultaneously afraid of scaring her away, and of making it sound interesting enough that she wants to come up. It was one thing to have strangers in the flat, another entirely to invite his childhood crush to move in with him.

She brightens. “Yeah, that’d be good. Ta!”

John steps out of the way and lets her slide past him into the hallway. “Just upstairs.” He leads her through the foyer and starts up the stairs. “Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, is on the ground floor. It’s a bit baffling up here though.” He opens the sitting room door and lets her in. “The... well this floor is all the common space, and my room.” He thinks he said my room properly, his brain tripping, trying to call it Sherlock’s still. “The attic is up there.” He waves to indicate the stairs behind her.

Mary rocks back onto her heels, and then forward onto her toes. “Is that a skull?” She waves at the mantle. 

“Yes.”

Her head turns fractionally, taking in the steer skull and the painting on the wall. “Do you like skulls then?”

“No. I can... I can clear some of this up if you wanted some room in here.” He’d meant to move the skull into his room, had done when he knew people were coming over to see the flat. 

“It is brilliant... The insides of a madman’s brain.” Mary flinches, her eyes closing slightly, shielding herself from the words. “I meant eclectic. It’s eclectic.”

“No. It’s alright. Would you like to go up and see the room? I can put the kettle on?”

“Ta, I’m parched.” She spins on her heel and heads for the stairs. 

John moves to the kitchen to fill the kettle. Almost drops it in the sink when Mary sticks her head in through the kitchen door.

“You haven’t got any biscuits?”

John’s heart pounds and his hand is perfectly steady as he holds the kettle under the tap. “Sure, I’ll put some out.”

“Ta.” The door swings shut and she clatters away up the stairs.


End file.
